Reviewed by Sarah Bean the Green Bean Teen Queen for TeensReadToo.com

Cassie has grown up on an Arctic research station in Alaska with her father. She's been told stories of her mother, who made a deal with the Polar Bear King and is now imprisoned by trolls.

Cassie is eighteen and doesn't believe in Polar Bear Kings or trolls anymore - it's just a nice way of saying her mother died. But when she seeks out a polar bear that starts talking to her and promises he can return her mother if she would become his bride, Cassie starts to wonder if fairy tales really are true.

I enjoyed Sarah Beth Durst's previous novels INTO THE WILD and OUT OF THE WILD, and I was excited to see she'd keep writing about fairy tales. In ICE, she takes the story of EAST OF THE SUN, WEST OF THE MOON and gives it a twist - it's a modern setting, and Cassie's mother was the first one to make a deal with the Polar Bear King.

You don't have to be familiar with the original tale to enjoy ICE. Ms. Durst makes the story her own and it's a beautiful, engrossing tale of how far someone would go for true love.

Cassie is strong and spunky - I think she rivals Belle as my favorite fairy tale heroine. Her determination and stubbornness make her likeable and appealing and she fights for what she wants. If I'm ever stuck with trolls, I want Cassie by my side!!

Ms. Durst's writing is very descriptive and draws you in. I could imagine myself in the ice castle with Cassie and Bear, could feel the North Wind blowing, and hear Father Forest's voice. ICE is a novel that draws you in to its setting and you want to fight along with Cassie.

Full of action and romance, ICE is sure to delight fans of all ages who enjoy curling up with a good fairy tale.

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I ABSOLUTELY LOVED THIS BOOK. It had everything I wanted from a book of its kind: a feisty female protagonist, epic adventures, luscious writing, and the kind of romance that stops hearts and makes you remember why romance exists in the world.

From the first page, I was ensnared by Sarah Beth's writing, which I must describe as âclean and freshâ: it's like wiping away a dirty window and gazing in wonder out at a beautiful, crystalline winter scene. Sarah Beth wastes no words, and yet manages to describe for readers an unbelievably beautiful and mesmerizing world with simple prose. Her writing style will appeal to fans of fairy tale writing, for its gorgeous, ethereal descriptions, as well as those of realistic fiction, so well grounded in our world it is.

Indeed, the way ICE inhabits a perfect space in between fantasy and reality is one of its unique and strong points. I love that this old Nordic legend is grounded in science: a research station with modern characters and real-time technology. We weave easily in and out of the magic and the real, making this an interesting reading experience. Cassie is feisty and snarky enough to make her a great 21st-century protagonist, and yet she is also courageous and incredibly determined, qualities that connect her with other epic fantasy heroines.

Of all the great parts about ICE, I think I like Cassie the best. You don't find girls like her very often in literature or real life anymore, girls who will do anything for love, girls who tire of domesticity and want to be useful, girls who don't want romance to consume their identities, girls who are scared of growing up too fast and making decisions that will affect them permanently. I loved how she faced problems of things like love vs. self-identity withâlet's admit itâmistakes and awkwardness. For a character of a fantasy novel, Cassie is remarkably relatable and can instantly be your best friend and role model for realistic issues.

And of course, I cannot end this review without talking about the romance between Cassie and Bear. Fans of Beauty and the Beast (especially Robin McKinley's Beauty) will see strong echoes of that kind of gradual love in ICE. Bear easily won over my heart with just a few lines of dialogue; if you want a nice-guy love interest, well, here he is. Gradual development of attraction and love are hard to come by nowadays, which is one of the reasons why I'm so happy the romance in ICE was done so well. Theirs is a love that grows subtly out of undramatic scenes, and is proven to be eternal by a literal âepic journey.â It is, once again, the result of the perfect blend between fantasy and realism.

ICE is certainly not without some weaknesses, of course. Supporting characters, especially Cassie's parents, are rather underdeveloped, and super-picky readers may have trouble following the occasionally choppy plot. However, readers looking for an old-fashioned fairy tale would do well to check Sarah Beth Durst's ICE out. Maybe I read it at the right time for me to fall head-over-heels in love with itâbut I think that you'll be able to appreciate the gorgeous world-building and story, no matter what kind of genre you enjoy best.

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This book is another retelling of the classic tale "East of the Sun, West of the Moon". I got this through the Amazon Vine program which was ironic since last month I read "Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow" by Jessica Day George, another beautiful retelling of this classic tale. Overall I really liked this book; Durst did an excellent job at updating this tale to the modern day world. I have never read the original tale so I don't know how true this version of the story stays to the original.

Cassie is an 18 year old researcher at an arctic polar bear research facility. Since she was little her grandmother has told Cassie the story about her mother, the daughter of the North Wind and how she made a deal with the Polar Bear King. As she gets older, Cassie realizes that this is just a nice way of saying that her mother died. That is until one day she tracks one unusual polar bear across the ice pack. She finds that her grandmother's story was not a story but truth. Her mother may still be alive, but will she be brave enough to face the promise that will get her mother back?

This was a great re-telling. Cassie is a tough character and I liked her a lot. The Polar Bear King is also a wonderful character. The plot moved quickly and made this book an easy read that was tough to put down.

I also loved the mythos created around the Polar Bear King and the other beast-like keepers of souls. I am not sure if this was in the original story. But it was very creative and very different from how Jessica Day George dealt with the story in "Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow". Durst did an excellent job modernizing this tale. She worked in the researchers efforts seamlessly with the Polar Bear King's soul taking/giving duties. I love that she included modern cold weather technology and even little things like birth control. It was very well done and very creative.

Overall I liked this book a lot. Parts of this story remind me of "The Beauty and the Beast" too.

I didn't give this book 5 stars because even though I liked it it was not something I would read again. There were also some inconsistencies. Especially with Cassies's stages of pregnancy; I failed to understand how Cassie had morning sickness in her second trimester of pregnancy and not in her first, that was a little off. Also the second part of the book where Cassie goes seeking the Polar Bear King had a very different tone from the first part. All of the wonderful modernization that made the first half of the book so great fell off in the second half as the book transformed to a more traditional fairy tale.

A great story; I would recommend to those who like fairy tale retellings or fairy tales in general. I will be keeping an eye out from more of Durst's works in the future.

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